The 2026 NFL draft is officially in the books, and the Las Vegas Raiders left it with a new face of the franchise. Fernando Mendoza went No. 1 overall and is now the team’s quarterback, the player expected to lead the rebuild in silver and black.
The Raiders added 10 rookies over the weekend and did it with a draft built around volume as much as star power. Mendoza enters the 2026 season with the second-best odds to win Offensive Rookie of the Year at +320, a sign of how quickly the league expects him to matter.
Las Vegas did not stop with its top pick. The Raiders took Treydan Stukes at No. 38 in Round 2, then used three straight top-100 selections on Keyron Crawford at No. 67, Trey Zuhn III at No. 91 and Jermod McCoy at No. 101. Mike Washington Jr. followed in Round 4 at No. 122, with Hezekiah Masses at No. 150 and Dalton Johnson at No. 175. The class was rounded out by Malik Benson at No. 195 and Brandon Cleveland at No. 229.
The structure of the weekend matters as much as the names. John Spytek traded back at the top of the second round for the second year in a row, sliding the Raiders back two draft spots and picking up an additional third-round choice in the process. That move gave the team more swings, and the Raiders used them. They also sent Tyree Wilson and their seventh-round pick to the New Orleans Saints for another fifth-round pick, another sign that the roster is being reshaped in real time.
There were no surprises at the top of the draft, and that was part of the point. Mendoza had been linked to Las Vegas for months before draft weekend, and the Raiders made the move that had been expected. The bigger question now is not whether they found their quarterback. It is whether Mendoza starts in Week 1 or is eased in behind Kirk Cousins while the rest of the class settles into a roster built to speed up the rebuild.
The Raiders added a running back for Ashton Jeanty in the draft, giving the offense another piece to help carry the load. If this class works the way the Raiders believe it can, the 2026 draft will be remembered as the weekend Las Vegas stopped talking about a rebuild and started building one.
